AI for Connection: Building Community in a Digital Age

So much of our technology promises us freedom from friction. One click, instant results, fewer awkward conversations with strangers. But what if friction—the messy, human kind—isn’t the problem to be solved, but the very thing that makes life worth living?

In this episode, Sophie Tidman talks with Rob Chapman, co-founder of Neya, a young AI company with a countercultural aim: not to make us faster or leaner, but to help us belong. Together they explore what happens when we resist the cult of efficiency and instead design tools that deepen trust and weave people back into each other’s lives.

It’s a conversation about community, leadership, and the strange paradox that in trying to make everything smoother, we risk sanding away the very rough edges that give our connections—and our organizations—their meaning.

If you'd like a reading list(!) here are the books we refer to in the podcast:

1. The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
2. The Age of Heretics: Heroes, Outlaws, and the Forerunners of Corporate Change by Art Kleiner
3. Uncharted: How to Map the Future by Margaret Heffernan
4. Machines of Loving Grace by Dario Amodei

Thanks so much for listening! Keep in touch:

• Email us on mail@mayvin.co.uk
• Subscribe to our mailing list
• Visit our website
• Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter

Transcript

AI for Connection: Building Community in a Digital Age

Speaker: [00:00:00] Hello, and a warm welcome to the Mayvin People Change podcast. This is the place to find thoughtful and heartfelt conversations about leadership and organization development. Each episode is created with our listeners in mind. So if you have a suggestion for a topic you'd like to hear us talk about, please do get in touch with us.

Mayvin are thought leaders in the area of leadership and organization development and have a wealth of experience in this area. We have a thriving community and we offer regular free events. You can find out more details via our website. Mayvin.co.uk. If you enjoy listening to this podcast, please do leave us a review on your favorite platform to help us grow our audience.

Thanks so much for being here, and we hope you enjoy listening.

Sophie: Welcome to Mayvin's podcast with me, Sophie Tidman, and today I'll be speaking to Rob Chapman, who is the [00:01:00] co-founder of Neya, A young AI company with an unusual mission, not to make us more efficient, but to make us more connected at a time when technology often strips away the small frictions that make communities thrive.

Neya is building tools that help neighbors to collaborate and trust one another. We had a conversation about what it's like out there for AI entrepreneurs right now and what it means to design technology for human connection. This is all very close to my heart about how connecting with purpose can set organizations apart.

So enjoy.

Alright, Rob, how has your summer been going? 

Rob: , It's been bliss. I've had a lovely time. I had a really good break with my family crafting in Wales. Uh, and then, uh, you know, we're right in the early stages of our startup, so back into full intensity of startup life, but at least we got the proper break.

Sophie: Were you doing the crafting or were your girls. 

Rob: Both. It's a beautiful family festival vibe. I've been printing things, making spoons, drawing stuff. It was great.

Sophie: Oh my gosh, that sounds [00:02:00] amazing.

Rob: It is called Forest. It's a tiny family festival with about 200 people and you stay for a week they've got lots of artists who just show off their art.

So every morning, afternoon, you can choose between four or five different sessions to do, we've been going for eight years, so my kids are just totally at home there. It's just, yeah, it's our little bliss for the year. 

Sophie: Distinctively low tech.

Rob: Distinctly low. 

Sophie: That's your day-to-day? 

Rob: yes, absolutely.

Zero tech, hopefully. 

Sophie: What's the atmosphere like in the startup 

world? 

Rob: , In the startup world more generally? Uh, there's so much excitement about ai, but also nervousness from investors about getting it wrong because they can, can see that there's gonna be, you know, brilliant returns and amazing companies built, but.

Of the big companies are just so far ahead and are churning out, every use case you think is brilliant. If it's at all obvious, then the big companies are likely to replicate it and do it [00:03:00] themselves. So there are lots of companies who look amazing one day and then someone makes an announcement, Google make an announcement, or open ai, make an announcement, or anthropic make an announcement, and suddenly it changes the vibe.

So there's, an interesting, investor fear about missing out. . But also conservatism about going for the, the really obvious efficiency use cases in ai, the ones that, you know, let's, let's make this company 20% more efficient by automating that bit of it, and so we can make, you know, that's the way to make money.

Sophie: Mm. 

Rob: So it's a very interesting environment. Yeah. 

Sophie: Very dynamic, very kind of on the edge. 

Rob: It kind of feels, yeah, it 

does. 

It feels like that. 

Sophie: So tell me about Neya, , and what inspired you to co-found Neya? 

Rob: Great, so, so n is an AI company that we're trying to use AI to make people more connected and collaborative and human.

So most AI companies, like I said, are making things more efficient and thinking about how can we automate something or make a job 10 times easier. , But we think that. [00:04:00] That, that leads to a, a future we don't really wanna live in where, you know, you as a human are able to do almost anything quickly and efficiently, but, miss what makes being human good, which is other people and social connection and all the small bits of social connection that add up to something much more meaningful in life.

And so we asked ourselves the question about a year ago of, well, what would AI do if its job were to make us more socially connected within a community, how would it operate? We've been studying for four or five years. This role of , the super neighbor, the people within a community who make a community really work.

Um, so there are people who know everyone, who, if you've got a problem, you go to them first and they know where to get the answer. If you're trying to achieve something, they'll probably help you. They know what's on and where to get things. And that's a really nice job that AI can, can play and can, uh, support people to do so.

Mm-hmm. We started to think about, well, what if AI wasn't working for you or for me? It was working for all of us. It was working for the community to try and make the community [00:05:00] more collective and connected. That's where we started last summer and we've been working pretty hard thinking about it for, for the best part of the year.

And then working sort of, we really started properly in May. Actually building what Neya is. What Neya does is, it helps people solve everyday problems in their local area. So when you need a recommendation for something want to know what's on, or you want to find people who are interested in the same thing as you, or anything you might want to do with people who live in your local area.

Neya is a starting point, so you can ask it and it will connect you with either the right people who live locally, the right organizations or the right businesses, depending on what they're trying to do. Mm-hmm. And through making these connections, it begins to build up the sort of social understanding of who's who in a neighborhood, who should be connected, what would make the neighborhood thrive, if which connections were made.

And it also allows people to, to join groups. So, you know, if you wanna be in touch with other parents of children of the same age, or a health group, or a community gardening group, or whatever it is, it, it, it can host [00:06:00] these groups together and make them work really well.

So it's AI that doesn't, doesn't make life necessarily more efficient in a straightforward way. It, but it does help us save time and money by being better joined up with the people around us. So you can more quickly find a recommendation for a great plumber, or can more quickly find a summer camp for your kids or, you know, anything you're trying to do locally.

That's the dream. 

Sophie: Hmm. And how has given the kind of, um, the investor bent towards efficiency AI, how have kind of your conversations been evolving with people investors and communities

Rob: uh, great question. So 2, 2, 2 sides of it with, investors, it's really good because the investors who really love us really love us 'cause they're looking for these sorts of ideas that are not.

Not obvious and not straightforward, and not just an efficiency play, and they're looking for impact, right? A lot of investors really care about the world that we create. So it means there's this narrower pool of investors, but they're really, really bought into what we do. we've got a, very clear set of, investors [00:07:00] who are mission aligned with us rather than, lots of the big investors who are very focused on B2B, clear AI use cases that are more predictable.

From a community point of view, it's been brilliant. We are very focused on our launch market because for what we're doing, you need to have really high density of, of people engaged and, and I'm also building something that I want for my local community. So we're starting here in Oxford where I live.

And yeah, we're having wonderful conversations with people about, you know, how much community means to them about. What, I guess what, what they want from their local area almost everybody when they think about it more deeply, you know, has sort of things. Oh, wouldn't it be great if, and you know, if you.

If you were in touch with a perfect neighbor tomorrow who could just make your life a little that little bit easier, what would you ask them for? And we just get such a range of interesting needs that people have that don't get expressed through today's platforms, that they're not things that people are acting on right now 'cause it's too difficult.

I find it infinitely inspiring, going out and meeting community organizers and local [00:08:00]community champions and talking about what they're doing and talking about how to make their life easier. It's, it's by far the best part of my job. 

Sophie: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's got a lovely bottom up feel.

Rob: Yeah.

And, you know, we'll talk probably later on more about trust in AI and, and, and I think, you know, what we're really trying to do is build it with people locally so that it builds in a way that. Isn't like a sort of top down, west coast American company sort of landing here with a magic alien tool.

It's very much built by the local community for what they need and then scaled up from there that. Means from day one, we're building a culture of listening to people and thinking hard about some of the important questions in trust, which in community work is the most important thing.

As soon as you lose trust, you lose the community. So yeah, it's essential for us that we start that way and it wouldn't work any other way. 

Sophie: Yeah, I think a lot of the work that Mayvin does starts with that question. Like more emergent kind of space, rather than saying well, this is the kind of solution that we're thinking of, and going in with an idea of what objectives you [00:09:00] have, where you want to get to.

It's like, actually, where's the space for having the conversation for developing possibility? Um. The real dialogue that's generative between people that creates something new.

Rob: Mm. 

Sophie: You know, when the idea that kind of, when people really spark off each other, which I think really shifts people away from that focus on efficiency towards what's the higher purpose here. What's actually really important to me. Which is connection rather than efficiency normally. 

Rob: Yeah, 

exactly. And, that's what., Probably for most people, when you ask them their best moment at work, it would be a moment with other people in some sort of creative flow.

If we lose focus and. Allow AI to keep automating more and more of what we do. We become disconnected, we become isolated. We spend, you know, 90% of our time not talking to people. So that 10% we do talk to people. We're kind of outta practice and it, we, we lose a lot of, a lot of the actual really valuable bit of business, which is one where, or government or [00:10:00] startup life or community life, which is when we're with people being creative and making new possibility and

I think it's really important, I believe sort of totally, fundamentally that we, we fight for that future where there are tools that help us be more collaborative and joined up and socially connected. They have to be the tools using, the best technology of today.

You almost have to compete for attention because otherwise, if the simplest thing to do is just get chat GPT to solve it, or, go to the automated checkout aisle rather than talk to the person. Like, people always choose the path of least resistance. So it's not enough to hope that, yes, I hope that humans will keep

talking to each other and connecting this kinda sounds stupid like that sounds, that sounds, but, but actually, if you look at trends, we spend far less time with other humans than we did 20 years ago. It's really shocking how, how every year, the average amount of time spent talking to people who aren't our close friends and family is going down and down and, and [00:11:00] so it's not like this is a

terrifying prediction I'm making about the future. I think it's a reality we are living in that we spend less time with each other in person, and so we are losing some of that natural skill to connect. It's an innate human skill. It's a thing that people want and and love when they do it, but if the barriers are too high, then it's easier to ignore it.

And so that's why, that's why we're starting with local communities. We think it can make such a difference to how people live. We think it can really transform areas to be better joined up. And, and we know, you know, there's so much research, endless research on how strong local communities make people more socially mobile people live longer.

Education outcomes are better people, more people survive in a crisis. Like almost everything you could want that's good for the world is eNeyabled . By people being connected in their community. And yet there's almost no research or evidence of how do we make that happen? It's a slow kind of, um, step in the wrong direction at the moment.

And so, you know, we, we love every project and [00:12:00] every person who's working on this, this issue of, what are the big step change things we can do that help us live better locally, in, in stronger, more joined up communities? 

Sophie: Yeah, it's interesting because, I hear your frustration at the lack of research or the attention that's put on the importance of connection and what it leads to and how we can do it better.

Yeah. Um, it reminds me, Ursula Le Guin, the sci-fi, um, writer who I'm just obsessed with. She talked about technology a lot, and the kind of, , power imbalances in how we think about technology. So we think about AI as this kind of amazing technology that's got a lot of status. Um, and often we think about technology like AI is about controlling, making things faster, whereas technology technologies in the world I'm in organization development, a lot of them are about how do we connect more as you're saying, like, how do we use

open spaces, how do we use unconference events? How do we use storytelling? Which is a very ancient technology. Yes. Um, to connect more, um, yes. And [00:13:00] to give kind of purpose to people and communities.

Rob: I think it's great 'cause you need those tools.

And I think, I think one of the, the big mistakes we can make is just assuming that. Um, the, the human connection and human organization is something that humans can just do and we leave 'em to it, as opposed to saying, no, we need to build the best possible tools to allow people to come together, collaborate, and get something brilliant out of it.

Sophie: Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

Rob: I certainly find there's a, there's a hesitance of using AI in this space. 'cause lots of people burnt by social media and lots of people have real fear of. Letting technology into human spaces. I totally understand that, and I do too.

You know, just talking about my brilliant holiday in Wales where I was completely disconnected, it is important to have the balance, to have the healthy skepticism , but we need, as people, we need to have the tools that are helping us be more social to, to be alongside the tools that are helping us be more efficient.

Otherwise, [00:14:00] the efficiency tools will always win. 

Sophie: Yeah, exactly. If we are leaving a vacuum, then yes, like the trend towards less connection. And I think Earl Burman calls it removing the friction in life. Removing, interact interactions to make everything more efficient and run more smoothly.

But it's in the friction. Right. That's in that actually is often the kind of the relationships, the connection, the surprises, the power shifts. Yeah. If you just make everything more efficient, all you're doing is kind of cementing, making faster, more efficient. Some of the power dynamics at the moment, I think that are not really serving us very well.

Yes,

Rob: i, I agree. And, and, the whole, my whole interest in this space, you started reading a book, by Jane Jacobs, the, the brilliant. So in 1950s, 1960s , she was a journalist, but a very academic journalist on, like city design, urban design, to write this great book called the. Death in life of the great American city, and it's all about how this, this friction, this is seemingly trivial.

The, the bumping up of [00:15:00] people on street corners, the selling of something, looking after a baby, commenting on someone's new haircut. Form the social fabric of community and. She talks a lot about, you know, in her day she was campaigning against, , the intrusion of massive freeways into communities.

So the redesign of urban centers for the motorcar. It's all the same sort of fear that by making everything about how do we get made to be more efficiently, we're destroying this small fabric of community life that actually makes people thrive.

It's the same sort of same thinking. It got me really interesting community. And actually it was reading that book. I was actually before work in, in the office sort of flicking through it kind of, um. And, um, uh, and Harry, who's now my co-founder who was in to meet someone else, and, uh, he sort of was like, oh, why are you reading that?

And, and he was just starting this amazing organization called Navy Lab, which does research into community connection and was just like, why is anyone reading this slightly off the wall 1950s academic book that he also loves? And it was that we [00:16:00] bonded over that, and that's, that, that was five or six years ago, and that's, that's how we ended up working together on this.

Sophie: It's a really interesting example from the idea of kind of complexity as well, because, um, of course when people built the freeways in America, they thought they were designing cities much more efficiently and it was much more top down because they knew the future and the future was motor cars, right?

Yep. Um, and compared to cities in Europe, you might correct me on this 'cause you know a lot more, but cities in Europe, which were built much more emergently. In that much more kind of bumping up against each other. Things kind of just popping up. Um, were seem to be more very higgledy peaty and inefficient, right?

Yeah. But you look at that today. And our reliance on the, car and how that might need to shift. Like, actually what was better? So it's a real shift between the top down and the more emergent kind of, you know, you're gonna need both, but actually , there's a lot less space, for the bottom up, more emergent,

ways which have their own wisdom that hasn't been listened to. Enough. Yes, 

Rob: Yes. I think, you are skeptical of any sort of the big top down [00:17:00] visions for what humanity should be or how it should work. Humanity is by its nature, kind of bumpy and bottom up and, you know, and vibrant.

And you know, the things that make communities work are sometimes the most frustrating bits about them when you know, it's the friction, it's the, it's the people who, oh, it would just be so much easier if everyone just agreed on the same things, but of course they don't. And they never will and never should.

You know, thinking about , what got me into part of it is that, uh, a reaction against the kind of, um, I've been in the sort of tech startup world since, you know, for 15 years or so, and yeah. That, that sort of. Messianic West Coast founder, I've got the answer, and it's gonna save everything

um, scares me. You know, it worries me that that's the domiNeyant, influence on the world we need more bottom up companies. Built thoughtfully and still for massive scale. Right? We absolutely want to be connecting hundreds of millions, billions of people in a way that, but in a way that's designed with them [00:18:00] and for them and through them in order to be.

To be positive rather than telling people what community should be and, and saying, right, you know, this is, this is how communities work. It's saying, well, look, we can connect you in any way you want to be connected and, and let's see what comes outta that. You know, and again, I, I think I said earlier on the sort of joy of my job has been listening to people and almost, I wish they all had the same use case.

I wish they were all like, I just want to borrow things. And that would, and we could just build a borrowing network. And you could, but actually it's not, it's not how people work. People had a thousand different things they want to achieve in their local area and a thousand different motivations for it.

And so you have to do, give them something that's much more neutral, that's a, a starting point that they can use in the way they want to. 

Sophie: Hmm. A space.

Rob: Yeah.

Sophie: Um, that tension you were referring to between kind of the, the emergent and the, and, and, you know, you're a small business. You've gotta make the case to investors.

You've got to be, you know, forward thinking and confident. Like, how do you, how do you manage that within there? How does your, you know, you, you, you are obviously very small now, but you have a, you have, you will have a culture, [00:19:00] you have kind of roles you play. Like how, how has that tension being, how has that tension been for you all?

Rob: Yeah. Um, so it's, I mean, you, you're right. It's always there as a tension. We have to evangelize about what we do and what we think and how we're trying to build and, and we are setting a vision, you know, the fact that people want these joined up connected communities and the fact that people are willing to engage in what we're doing and what we're building.

Can be, massively beneficial for people's lives. And so we'll then take off and become a mainstream consumer AI across, the whole of the UK initially, and then the wider world. So, you know, we, we are selling our vision, but, um. But trying to do so in a way where, you know, we've set this sort of culture of like, our, our mission comes first of we want this to be good for communities.

And we're thinking all the time about every decision we make. You know, sometimes it's very painful, like we spend hours debating things that, you know, you could, might be able to decide in 10 minutes, you know, if you [00:20:00] were, if you didn't care about the outcome, you, you only cared about the, the fiNeyances. You know, you might go, oh, let's just do that.

We spend a lot of time debating every new feature, every new idea. To say, does it help us achieve our aims of making people more socially connected where they live? We're doing, lots of work to make sure that's built in from the culture in the three founders on day one.

That then sets the tone for everyone who joins. You know, in all my career, leadership does set the conversations that happen, you know, more than anything else, the questions that the CEO and the senior leaders are asking are the questions that, the next layer down will ask their people, it is so important that you make space for the right.

The right questions, early on, you know, as well, and the necessary questions and all the fiNeyancial questions and all the sort of, how do we scale, you know, all the stuff that's not just about purpose, but if you don't make space for it on day one, then you're not gonna do it on day 10 or day a hundred or day thousand.

We really do protect the time between the three of us to keep asking ourselves, are we on the right? Path is this decision the right one? Is this opportunity that's come up with us? Should we take it or should [00:21:00] we leave it? Is it taking us away from the mission or furthering us?

You know, and, and startup life is unpredictable. You know, you get random emails dropping your inbox from a completely random person who's heard about the company and wants you to do a partnership on this thing, or, you know, and, and you have to, you have to, and, and the only way to survive it and survive all the random bits of advice from every conversation you have.

Is to be really clear on the mission and keep coming back to those same questions. So, , so that's how we're, we're en enjoying it and I hope, staying on track. It's early days, so, yeah, it's just part of it's about, about hustling and just, you know, saying yes to everything and trying to, trying to sort of find where those opportunities that are really gonna be transformational come from.

Sophie: It's really lovely to hear , the enjoyment and the pleasure you get from it because it can be incredibly stressful, as you say, the market at the moment as well. But it sounds like you are, it's not lonely. There's a comrade ship 

Rob: Yeah. I mean, I would, you, you cannot do this on your own, I'm lucky, blessed with two [00:22:00] founders who really deeply share the

the ethos and the principles of what we're trying to make and who want to build something that is important in the world, not how can we make money as quick as possible. And , and by making something important, you know, we, of course we want to build something that's commercially successful too, but. It means that, yeah, I don't feel lonely 'cause I'm not fighting against everybody else.

I'm deeply aligned with my two co-founders and we're trying to find our path in the world. It is a hugely stressful thing just starting to start up. There's, you know, you, you're like, you are wrong on so many fronts and yeah, absolutely. I lose sleep and I, you know, work hard and worry that we're making every mistake under the sun and I'm sure we are.

But, um. Yeah. I, I still, when I get time to have conversations like this where I really think, and reaffirm what we're in it for and what the future we're, we're trying to create looks like. Then of course I feel, I feel, I feel joyous and motivated again it's brilliant. So thank you.

Sophie: You're very welcome. [00:23:00] It's my favorite bit of my job is connecting people or reconnecting people to purpose. Yeah. Um. You talked a bit about speaking with communities about different needs, and I wondered, 

what that was like in terms of talking to, you know, the man on the street versus, um, man or woman on the street versus kind of, um, those who are really engaged with AI versus who, who the most vulnerable might be, and how they might be supported by ai because it, we don't often seem to have conversations about the most vulnerable.

Yeah. Um, and that, and how a, how AI might shift things for that. 

Rob: a brilliant question. So very, very proud. Last week we were announced that we're in the final for, um, the William Sutton Prize, which is a prize for, um, community innovation led by Clarion, the UK's biggest social housing provider.

Um, and for exactly this reason that we transformational start, you know, we want to be building something that serves. The people who need community [00:24:00] most. Socially that's the thing we want to do. And also from a success point of view, you, you transformational build for people who, who need and want, want your service.

And actually, you know, being more joined up within your social housing block, that helps you save money or go to market collectively or, campaign for something you need as a, as a individual or as a a, a group. Um. Is, is much, is high, high up the list of, of needs versus, you know, other areas where it might, might be more about how to live my best life and how to, I dunno what to do this weekend.

You know, it's sort of, there, there are very different questions depending , on where you launch. And so, you know, a lot of our work has been talking to people, all different types of people in every single different environment. Anyone who will talk to us about community, 

again, feeling like you belong to something has no, it's, it's universal. It's totally fundamental to human psyche that people want to feel a, a sense of security and comfort Being surrounded by people , who care. How they express that , is very different. But, [00:25:00] we find the need equally strong in every different situation.

Sophie: And of course it kind of moves into social activism then I mean, I was reading on holiday, it wasn't really holiday reading, , but it was talking about social activism. It was the age of the heretic. Oh yeah, which is a great, great book, if you interested in the history of organization and organizatioNeyal development. But yeah, talked about social activism in the 1960s and seventies and how that shaped organizations a lot of it was supporting communities to work more collectively and to share knowledge more.

Yes. Um. I mean, that gets quite political, which is maybe, not within your , mission, but I wonder how inevitably these things become a bit political. 

Rob: What we don't have on Neya is anywhere to broadcast to everyone.

You talk one-on-one to n and n then makes connections. Those connections might be to a group or to an individual. But it's not, you know, it's not, there's no newsfeed, there's no area where you can sort of make campaigns. So if you want to connect to other people. Deeply hold [00:26:00] your, your beliefs, political beliefs, no matter what they are with, within reasonable safeguards, then they connect you.

And so yes, it can be a platform , for organizing around a campaign or an idea . But, that doesn't swing the platform into politics, and we're very, keen and careful to support connection and community no matter what community, people want to create.

For instance, you know, finding people who care about, their impact on the environment and how, you know, most environmental interest and activism starts locally. Through getting involved in local campaigns people begin to get involved in larger ones.

The easier people can join up around environmental campaigning particular projects or even community gardening there's a wonderful organization, parents for Future, which is about connecting parents who want to teach their kids about, environmentalism and, your impact.

So WhatsApp groups, just people, you know, exchanging ideas on WhatsApp. It's all these small local things that then. Then they build, you know, the, if, if Everywhere's got a Parents for future and lots of people more, more [00:27:00] and more people are involved in it, it builds this movement that then starts to influence regioNeyal politics and National politics and, and policy.

So yeah, we really hope that by making it easier to be active locally, we do have a positive impact on democracy. And in fact, one of our early investors is a foundation in the states who are trying to invest in things that can, have a massively positive impact on trust and on democracy.

And these are, this is what foundation's all about and they've, they, they've got lots of top down things. And the reason they're excited about us is 'cause, you know, we, we rebuild that at a sort of social fabric bottom up kind of way. 

Sophie: Yeah. Yeah. It made me think of, um. In my area, in North Essex. But um, it's up until sort of Suffolk and Norfolk, there's Rewilding efforts and I remember being sent, sent stuff or finding out online, um, about how they're trying to build kind of a contiguous area for Rewilding.

Because if you have a little bit of land or you know, even gardens that connect, right? But that's quite difficult to just do ma on mass [00:28:00] or on the website, but through ai that would be incredible to link up people who care about that.

Rob: Exactly, spotting the connections, that could be made.

So if someone's asking about, their garden redesign, interested in making a more environmentally friendly garden or insect rich garden, the AI can say, well, yes, here's, here's, I'll help you with that, but actually, would you like to be engaged and involved in the much larger rewilding?

Mission that's going on locally, and here's 10 people you could connect to who are interested in it as well. It can help build people , into these communities, or at least suggest that

they engage. 

Sophie: So we talked a little bit about the public debate around, , ai.

Rob: Hmm. 

Sophie: How would you love to see that shift? Like what kind of conversations would you love to be hearing more in the next kind of year or five years? The perceptions of time are quite difficult to pinpoint like what's a realistic timeframe for anything 'cause of expectations going crazy and definitely de and so that's why, 

Rob: that's why I would love to see is people [00:29:00] really focus on.

For, for most people to focus on the now. So I think the big existential worries about, technology singularity economic singularity job singularity, all these moments we can't see past. When AI makes something that's, that's, you know, fundamentally changes the way that society works, democratic singularities, all these sorts of things that academics and people in the AI research space worry about and should worry about.

It feels like. When I talk to people day to day, there's so much attention put on those things, which we can't, influence or think through in, in depth. So I, I, but they, it takes away the attention from actually what, what's AI doing to our lives now?

You know, what are you, what decisions are you making? What are you allowing to happen or not allowing to happen? That's important to how your organization works today? And, and it's by doing the things right today and setting the culture and the right questions being asked. Like I said, everyone like breach.

Thing you adopt in ai, like what's it doing to [00:30:00] your culture? Like what's it, how does it change how people feel or how, how people access your company or how people feel included, like by asking the right questions of what we're doing today. Then from an organization point of view, we set the culture that we'll begin to.

To, to have better answers to those big, intractable questions. Otherwise it feels like you're in a big, you know, enjoyable dinner party discussion about abstract problems for the future that people kind of enjoy. But it's great you then finish dinner and go home and no one does anything.

I would love to see people spend a lot more time focusing on what they're doing now with ai. How are they experimenting with that? How are they putting safeguards in today? How are they ing? I mean, I, I used one example that , made me really sad is I was working with, uh, a recent graduate and she was applying for lots of law, you know, grad schemes.

And she's brilliant. You know, she's got top class degree from a top class university, and was finding that every application she sent was rejected normally 45 seconds. [00:31:00] You know, so it's like literally you don't even get the mo, it's like you spend hours writing your application and get AI screened out straight away.

And she just completely. Sort of depressed by this idea. And so what it said to her is, right, well, , this is an arms race. I need to have AI on my side. And so, you know, you've probably seen all these interview cheating ais that can sit and sort of suggest answers to questions.

Of course graduates are gonna turn to those if companies are turning to ai. Like, and so. This, this feels like, you know, who's, who's really benefited, you end up with 10 times more applications 'cause people are just giving them to anybody and you can't filter them. And so you are, you are to filter and I just think these sorts of things, you don't have to participate in the arms race and you can think of creative ways in which your, your brand expresses something different from the average law firm recruiting 21 year olds.

You know, and that differentiates people and mark them out as being much more thoughtful about this. I think it's one example, you know, the way that people are adopting AI today feels, gold rushy, sort of [00:32:00] like, let's do it, as much as fast as possible without, the top down culture of asking the right questions, instead of relying on.

The law part of the business or some framework that some consultant has given rather than a real culture of questioning. 

Sophie: Yes. And of course, all these cases where AI is being, used in a bit of an arms race, zero sum way. The real story behind that is our recruitment.

Most people's recruitment processes aren't very good at getting the best people. They aren't the most inclusive. And so you try and make them more efficient. It just makes their weaknesses more apparent. 

Rob: Yes. 

Sophie: And hopefully that's stimulus for a better conversation and formulation about.

What makes this person a really good fit for this company? Let's talk about purpose. Let's talk about kind of what we really need from each other. What, you know, have a, have a more human conversation. This point about how we perceive the future in relation to the present. Sounds like a big philosophical point, but it, became very apparent when we were doing the masters. We have a [00:33:00] module on the future of organizing. 

Rob: Hmm. 

Sophie: This idea that the conceptualization of the future as just over there. And we're all aiming to get this project done and we'll just get that project done and then we'll sort out culture. Well then, you know, it's all kind of very future oriented rather than actually what's happening right now in the present.

What's our agency right now? However small the move is. We're in a continuous flow. We're co-creating the future right now. Yeah. , In the present. It's a very different feel and gives. A lot more agency because I felt as soon as we started talking about future, a lot of the time, colleagues, peers , organizations would suddenly just clam up.

Yes. Would feel very oppressed by it. 'cause it's this kind of future that's sort of being done to them. Rather than being multiple potential futures that we're co-creating in the moment.

Rob: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that clamming up is

A great risk, right? I think, AI is a really important technology to the future, and, you know, by people you know, who's completely shun it and, and, and, and [00:34:00] refuse to engage in it. I feel like there's, there was a thing that was really influential on me. Someone said,

to me the world population is gonna peak at about 10 billion people, by current UN projections. And we already have enough food enough energy, and enough water in the world, you know, and so all we have less is an optimization problem, and AI is a fit

is brilliant at optimization. This is why I'm working in ai there's a way of putting your mission on a global scale. I think , it's true. There isn't a going backwards and a sort of, turning everything off Utopia that works without , massive population decimation.

We have to think about how we use ai positively and productively. We need other technologies too, like Fusion and quantum computing and, and many other things that will help. And those, you know, there's lots written, you know, the, uh, the Essay Machines of Loving Grace lays out some of these futures from the CEO of Anthropic.

Um, but it misses all the human goodness. It's all about the sort of technical we can, this, here's how we, you know. [00:35:00] Here's how AI can help the climate, crisis and healthcare crisis and,, how it creates economic opportunity. All these, all the science opportunities, this is all the, all the things he argues about, but he ignores completely what it does to humans and society.

And society almost not, not mentioned in the essay. So I feel like that's the bit that. We need to fight to make that louder and a bigger part of it without, without clamming up and shutting down whenever we think about the future, which is common, as soon as you mention ai, people are like, ah, stop.

Sophie: Yes. Interesting. At dinner parties, I'm sure some people love you and some people maybe don't. 

Feel really intimidated. 

Rob: Well, I think people love the mission and almost the technology is secondary. Whatever the technology was, we'd be using the best technology to try and achieve our mission of the day.

One of our product design principles is how do we minimize the amount of time talking to Neya and maximize the amount of time talking to other people. If there's ever a step we can get rid of, that gets you quicker in touch with a human. That's what we're trying to do.

So if these [00:36:00] principles we wrote down at the beginning when we talked earlier about setting culture, that mean that every time we're making a product decision, we've got, oh yeah, it's kind of obvious which of these two options we might choose. Which one gets you in touch with a human quicker,

So, yeah, we're, we're really not about the ai, we're just using AI in a way that is beneficial to people. So, yeah, I like, we don't transformational be thought of as an AI company particularly, we want to be thought of as a human connection company. 

Sophie: Yeah, I think so. The technology is just the tools, isn't it?

Rob: But then everyone loves talking about ai, so you have to get the balance right. It's a constant, you know, yeah, yeah. People are interested in rightly so. And, you know, I love having these conversations. They're very interesting. But, 

Like you say, the more you can focus on what we're doing today and how it makes your life better, you know, today, tomorrow, how it makes your life better for other people as well, you know, we don't live in a vacuum. So, you know, is your, is the way you are using AI impacting your family members? You know, it's interesting question. Yeah. People maybe don't ask themselves enough. 

Sophie: So, [00:37:00] I suppose last question I was gonna ask you about, what kind of future you'd like to see AI would, AI would help us build,

I wonder actually if we should talk more about the present it's lovely, those principles. , You talked about guiding your decisions, as a business, but what kind of questions or principles would you suggest for each of us to think about a bit more when we are using ai?

Rob: Yeah. So I think people use it instinctively because it's like talking to somebody else. And so I would ask of who am I? Who am I not talking? Or what am I not doing because I'm, I'm using this tool, and I think that helps you decide whether this is a good use case. just what am I replacing with I sort of joke with my mum that I've stopped bringing her for gardening advice that's a great example. You know, what have I stopped doing? Well, I ring my mom slightly less frequently because chat gt can help me work out what's a weed and what isn't. But it's not a great use [00:38:00] case. When I sort of thought about that more deeply,, I've stopped and started ringing mum again.

I think thinking about. What are you getting, what are you losing by adopting this tool, and what am I gaining? it might be you're gaining 10 minutes of your time and that's brilliant. You're gonna spend that 10 minutes, you know, interacting with colleagues and it's gonna be great.

Or it might be that you end up. Sitting next to colleagues all day and never speaking to them because everyone is making the same small optimizations that take you away from having to talk to each other. I think, um, yeah, that's, that's probably the most fundamental question , is what I'm losing by making this decision.

Sometimes it's all gained, like, if it's a meeting that is better because. You have, a better agenda and it's all run better. And AI is helping you actually spend more time on the important stuff. 'cause you've got some brilliant AI tool and then wonderful. Like, that's, that's

the kind of thing people should be doing. 

Sophie: I think I might also borrow that principle you have in Maya about, does this connect us more? Or less. Which is a sort of grow on your kind of, what's the cost of [00:39:00] this? What am I not doing? 'cause I'm using this ai.

Rob: Life isn't all about efficiency.

Sometimes we are weirdly making people less efficient at times. You know, where it's like, well, we could give you an answer. Sometimes you just want a plumber, right? And you're just, I don't care. Like I need them now. I just want a suggestion.

And we need to know when that is. And sometimes you're like, actually I want the best, but I transformational connect with a neighbor over. Who, who have they used before? And I want recommendations. And I want to feel like I'm not going to market alone. I'm in this together with other people and not facing the wide world, just little me against the, the massive kind of the massive world.

Knowing where to add friction is really important. It's important thing for a company to think about is where, where do we want? Just where do we just transformational be efficient or where do we want actually some inefficiency and some friction? And I think that Margaret Heffernan's another brilliant, brilliant

author to recommend. So, uncharted is, is her book and, and she talks a lot about how the, her, her more famous book is Willful Blindness, but her book Uncharted talks about what the drive for efficiency and the domiNeyance of [00:40:00] accountants in companies has done to company culture.

And I find it brilliant. It sort of me, she talk about how it got rid of some of this big thinking, this ambition, this optimism in the world. This idea that we can build stuff and we can sort of suspend disbelief for a while and create something unreasonable that drove most of.

Economic growth and, human prosperity. But in the last, the slow creep of measuring everything, making everything efficient, you have to justify even taking time away from the main efficient thing that your company does to explore this potential future.

And it just means that you don't have a possibility. You erase the possibility of unexpected things. Coming out are wonderful for the world. I hadn't actually thought about that book for a while, but it had a real impact on me that this idea of creating inefficiency is a really strategic thing to do.

Sophie: Yes, absolutely. I think it was, um, somebody once pointed out to me. We're always worshiping at the altar of [00:41:00] something. A very secular society, but we're always worshiping something and it probably pays to be aware about that and as a former economist, I realize a lot of the time I was worshiping at the altar of efficiency.

Yeah. I do like efficiency, of course. I like things run efficiently in my household. Will always have that instinct. I think what you're talking about is being really purposeful and intentioNeyal about our lives given the speed and the noise we have in our society around us at the moment, that only makes it more important that we do that in a more.

Conscious way. 

Rob: Yes. 

Sophie: It seems like a nice place to stop. Thank you, Rob. 

Rob: It's brilliant. Really fun conversation.

Sophie: I loved that conversation, so hopefully you enjoyed it too. And if you would like to explore a little bit more with Mayvin about how technology doesn't just shape the future, but how we connect right in the present moment, we are beginning to explore some of these questions in practice through our new AI Jams, where we're bringing people together to experiment with what AI [00:42:00] might mean for organizations and communities.

So do look out for more from us in this space. And thanks as always for listening.